


A Little Too Personal

by George Derby (Geoffryhawk)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22183582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geoffryhawk/pseuds/George%20Derby





	A Little Too Personal

Jack was feeling the strain, he’d been at this job now for a decade, it was getting time to hand this whole business off to younger members. Noticing grey in his hair, and lines on his face only made this more apparent every day. He dropped the papers on his desk, and decided to take a break, he’d earned it.The reports could wait. 

  
A hop and a skip and he’d ended up in the kitchen. Well more like break room, he glanced around the almost empty room; his eyes settled on the rather bulky man hunched over a glass and a bottle. Whiskey? Looked like it, seemed a little early for drinking. He furrowed his brow. George had never really been on any of his teams, Jack had been Army, and George was a Seal. Completely different worlds, he’d heard a few stories second hand about the man’s kill count and not all of them were Omnics; though the official file was less than helpful on this point.   
  
If he recalled George was a bit older than him, maybe by a year or two. He only really knew the man by his code name, or rather, his other half. Hephaestus and damn was that guy good at collateral damage. Luckily they only dropped him in places already mostly destroyed.   
  
What the hell, he might as well sit down with the man, no one should drink alone. They were both midwestern country kids, maybe that meant they had something in common there.   
  
George looked up as the commander sat down with his frankly molten microwave food tray, and he raised a brow. “Yello, commander;” he greeted with a brief sort of smile.   
  
“I think I’m off duty, but don’t tell anyone, call me Jack;”    
  
“All due respect, I dunno you well enough for Jack, hows about we go with Morrison, eh?” George replied, god that was a thicker accent than the commander had expected.   
  
“I honestly forget for a moment where you came from, I betcha I could guess,” Jack mused giving the mush that was macaroni a try. Too hot, and kind of awful.   
  
“Oh I suppose,” George accepted.   
  
“Michigan, Upper Peninsula,” came the wager.   
  
“Alright, ya got me, guess I owe you somethin, eh?” the giant of a man reached into his pants pocket. “Hows about a penny? This ones real shiny.”   
  
“Where the hell did you get a penny in this day and age?”   
  
“Collect em, found a whole jar of em up north, when my mom passed on; she’d willed me the property,” he said and took a swig as Jack examined the coin.

Morrison watched the glass drain, curious how much of the bottle had disappeared from this sitting. “No missions coming up?” Jack asked, he couldn’t recall if he’d put together any teams with George in them.   
  
“One, but it doesn’t matter how much I drink, don’t get drunk...at this point it’s more for the taste. I pretend it’s doing something,” mused the man. “Sides folks aren’t really sending me out, the big guys who ya want.” He poured a bit more into the glass and took a sip.   
  
“Well I mean…”   
  
“Look no need to tell me different, without the big guy I’m a washed up spec-ops nobody, with a bum leg and metal arm to boot,” George mused with a dry laugh. “I’m glad, being here anyway…”   
  
Jack hummed and stopped eating for a moment curiously expecting George to elaborate. Morrison was himself feeling the want to escape from his position not endure any more of it.   
  
The big man seemed to pick up that Jack wanted further explanation. “Well, I woulda been out of the field for good; they discharged me with some damned purple heart, just like that, good work soldier, go home, get out of our hair. That mistake at the hospital saved my life, if I’m honest,” he said as he scratched the fuzz on his chin. “I lost pretty much everything when I came home. Wasn’t really much left to live for.”   
  
The commander wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I’m...sorry to hear that…” He cleared his throat. “I...uh…”   
  
“You don’t have to apologize, had quite a few years to figure that all on my own,” George said holding up a big hand. It was hard to grasp for Jack, of course they’d both served, but from 18 through to now he’d never really known anything else. From what he knew of George’s past he’d lived a lot more beyond the service than Jack ever had.   
  
“I guess I just don’t know anything about that...I’ve only ever done...this I guess,” he said with a cough. He didn’t want anymore of his tasteless microwave dinner and promptly pushed it aside.   
  
George leaned back and crossed his arms over his broad chest. Everything about the man had a largeness to it. He wasn’t quite as tall as Reinhardt, but had that sort of build that’d go pound for pound with the German crusader. “Nobody’s ever walkin the same road, Morrison; my father died in the line of duty, my uncle got off with a shattered hand; how it goes, y’know?” He shrugged.

Jack furrowed his brow and nodded slowly. “I...suppose.” He wasn’t sure what else to say to that, it wasn’t exactly a yes or no; he had to agree that everyone’s path diverged at some point. Him and George had walked different paths to get to Overwatch at the very least. Jack found George’s peace with the end of that path a bit perturbing. “Sound a bit like someone I know, you a religious man George?”   
  
  


“God fearing, at least I liked all the things I read in my mother’s bible when I was young,” there was a pause as he considered for a moment. “I wouldn’t exactly call myself a man of the church, just someone who’d like to believe, y’know?”   
  
“Yeah, my parents were the same way, you remind me of my dad…” Morrison mused. “Not that it’s a bad thing.”

George gave a dry laugh. “Maybe it’s cause I’m a father myself, always was a dream of mine, have kids, settle down; as you can see I’m here instead, so I guess that didn’t work out, eh?” he said with a sigh as he fondled the glass a bit. He took a long swig, letting the glass hit the table a little too hard. Seemed the subject was soar. George put his hand in his pocket again, pulling out a beat up leather wallet. He opened it up and pulled out a pair of worn photographs. “I’ve got them backed up and saved to a few different places, so I never lose them, but I like having something to touch.”   
  
Morrison slid them over and examined them, the pictures had that look of age and the wear told of their value. A younger George, and a pair of children neither could be older than 4 and one seemed to be only a baby in most of them. “Cute, what’re their names?” Jack asked returning them to George.   
  
“My little girls named for her great aunt, Kathryn, and the other is named for my grandfather, Thomas. I’d usual call Kathryn, Kitty Kat, and my boy was always Tommy;” the man replied, a distant smile on his face, sense that these photographs represented a different era. The way he talked about it made it sound like they weren’t around anymore. Jack didn’t want to assume anything.   
  
“Must be in their 20s now, you keep in touch?” he decided to hazard, that seemed safe, though the lack of pictures of them at an older age made him wonder.   
  
George’s brow knit into something like pain. “Naw, their mom took them away, had me sanctioned...said I uh...I’d hurt them. Guess it’s not hard to believe I could but...never. They were all that was left after I was discharged, I guess she didn’t really care for me when I was around all the time...I tried not to fight too much,” he murmured. “Just do what she said to, pretend everything was alright…” He cleared his throat. “Sorry this is a bit too personal, didn’t mean to ruin your lunch.”   
  
“Eh, not so hungry anyway,” Jack replied and tried to figure out something else to say, what did that pain feel like? He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to imagine. Never thought of having kids himself, though he supposed it’d happen...how old he was maybe it wouldn’t. “Sorry, George, I don’t know if I could even pretend to know what that’s like…”   
  
“No, don’t suppose you could, it was a long time ago, I was told I couldn’t see them and if I did while they were under legal age...then I’d be taken to jail,” George said and shrugged. “How it goes, her word against mine. I don’t blame the system for believing her. But then she took my kids to California, what was I supposed to do? I used my mom as a go between, she said she told them stories about me. Can’t imagine what she’s said, she just didn’t want them thinking I was some kind of monster…”

Jack nodded along, he wasn’t a therapist or a counselor and he should suggest George see one, but he supposed it was something of a man to man? He was the commander after all, he was basically sworn to confidentiality when it came to this kind of thing.   
  
“Well, never could keep in touch, but I marked every birthday; I liked to buy something, I wasn’t sure what they’d like when they got older, so I’d get a little of this little of that each time. Figure when I finally met them again they could pick and choose what they liked…” he smiled a bit at that. “Stupid…”   
  
The commander gave a snort and shook his head. “Nah, sounds nice; my weird aunt for 10 years straight gave me the same matchbox car, cause she knew I ‘liked race cars’ the last one I got at 25, already in the army, heading for the crisis and this little box shows up from crazy Aunt Harriot, and it’s the same damned car,” he explained and that got a chuckle out of George. “Middle of this war with omnics I get this damned package. I honestly started hollerin’ and almost crying. Nobody understood why it was so funny.”   
  
The man’s shoulders loosened up and he looked a bit more open than he had. “Reminds me of the care package I got from Uncle Todd, he’d sent a dime of Marijuana, and a travel bottle of shampoo. And that’s all that was in the package, now you might have thought I’d turn in the contraband and you’d be wrong;” George said looking around tapping his nose. “I tell you what after the 4th throat you start to lose an appetite, passed that around the tent, and I had 6 Seals asking whether it was Dawn or Dusk, because the fire was orange.”   
  
Jack looked aghast before he started chuckling along with George. “You didn’t…”   
  
“God as my witness, that’s the honest truth…” And Jack could do nothing but believe him. He felt so clean cut hearing that kind of story. “Best part was a tentful of Seals waking up naked because they thought that since it was dusk no one would see them drying their clothes.”   
  
“Why did they need to dry their clothes?”   
  
“They didn’t, but everyone started saying moist a lot…and I lose track of what happened after that.”   
  
Jack had his hand over his mouth as he laughed till his stomach hurt. “We should go out for drinks sometime George, I need to hear more about that…” he mused, happy to have diverted the man from his more painful past. “I can tell you more about weird Aunt Harriot.”   
  
“Love to hear about her, nothing like odd family from the Midwest…”   
  
“You’re damned right.”

There was a brief pause of quiet as their laughed burned out. Jack stood up and shook George’s hand which frankly seemed to engulf his. “Pleasure really meeting you George, good luck on your mission,” he mused.

“You too, Morrison, and thanks, I’m sure the big guy can handle it.”

“Take care of yourself, we’ll have to find time for drinks.”

“Free when you are, sir;”

And that was that, Jack left the man to the last of his bottle, and headed back for his desk. With all the resources at his disposal surely he could find a pair of civies. But...would that be the correct thing to do? He decided yes, it was. All the years George had given to this organization, he could give something back. Maybe when he arranged drinks, he’d arrange that. “Athena, George Pickford, we’ve got his file yeah?”   
  
“Of course, Commander, everything from his military service to his time at Overwatch.”

  
“I need you to look for a pair of names in our wider database, scan others if you can, Kathryn Pickford, Thomas Pickford;”   
  
“Right away, Commander;”   
  
Yeah that seemed the right thing to do indeed, Overwatch was about helping people, well this was him helping someone.


End file.
